Softball: Montini has a blast at home against Fenwick

After more than a year without a home softball field, Montini played host to Fenwick on Wednesday afternoon and had a blast, even if the foul poles have yet to be put up.

The Broncos sent three home runs over the newly constructed outfield fence and knocked off visiting Fenwick 15-0 in five innings. The 2016 Class 3A champs were road warriors all of last spring, and bad weather this spring has relegated them pretty much to indoor practices, dome games and a 4-2 trip in Florida.

But Montini (7-2) looked thrilled to be back at home on Wednesday, jumping ahead 2-0 in the first inning on a blast to center field by Nikki Cuchran. Then they scored nine more times in the next two innings - all after two outs - on their way to the one-sided GCAC victory.

"I think we were really excited to get back on our home field. That really gave us the momentum to just have fun with it," said left fielder Alyssa Filkowski, whose fourth-inning grand slam capped off the team's 15-run outburst. "Coach (Mike Bukovsky) just said to think of it as a 1-0 game, and I was already having a blast. So, I was just kind of having some fun and was able to hit it over."

The Broncos' order contributed up and down throughout the lineup, with leadoff hitter Emily Alexander walking and scoring twice, including a seven-pitch at-bat in the first that set the stage for Cuchran's shot that opened the game's scoring. Cuchran, Montini's No. 3 hitter, had three hard hits, scored three times and was hit by a pitch in her final at-bat.

While the team's slugger continued to hurt the ball the way she has done since she first arrived at Montini, she had plenty of help. Winning pitcher Bri Clifton had a 2-run homer in a 4-run third and also had an RBI single in the second. Filkowski finished the day with 5 RBI and 3 runs scored.

"Nikki's only going to see a few pitches a game and that's the way it's going to be. So when other girls hit the ball out of the park like Bri and Alyssa, that makes it awful hard to defend us," Bukovsky said. "It's nice if you don't pitch to Nikki and get everyone else out, but that's been a real nice thing the last couple weeks with our lineup hitting, then you've got to pick your poison."

Clifton (7-0) blanked the Friars over three innings while allowing just one hit. Allyson Dilday completed the shutout, allowing just two hits and striking out the side in the fifth. Fenwick dropped to 5-5 on the year and 1-1 in conference.

"I feel like I did pretty good and I have a great defense behind me," Clifton said. "That really helped my confidence and I was able to relax and we all had fun. The home run felt great, I like that I also hit it over the (adjacent) baseball fence. That was awesome."

"This was our first day on the field, and we just got the fence up about a week ago," Bukovsky said. "So we don't have the banners up yet and we don't even have foul poles up yet. Once we get it rolling and we get all the bugs out we're going to have a nice home field here so we're pretty excited about it."